The Abridged Ajani

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Which Existentialist Philosopher Are You? created with QuizFarm.com

You scored as Albert CamusYou are Albert Camus, so you are one sweet absurdist. He built largely upon the framework of existentialists before him, but introduced the concept that life is absurd, but that we should continue living anyway. You have strong liberal leanings, although you annoy the Communists. You are susceptible to driving fast, and possibly crashing into a tree. Albert Camus 71% Jean-Paul Sartre 68% Friedrich Nietzsche 61% Martin Heidegger 46% Soren Kierkegaard 29% Not An Existentialist 14%

Well personally I am more familiar, and resonate more with Sartre and Nietzsche amongst the big existentialist names. Kierkegaard is fine, actually, but his “leap to faith” seems to just repeat what good ol’ Ecclesiastes mentioned a good few thousand years ago.

Camus - hmm, I have heard of this name. Perhaps the only reason why I would resonate with him is for his idea of the ‘absurd’ (which Kierkegaard mentioned before him), but it is not one of the most fundamental things in my existential style. Sartre lags close behind a really tight 3% - must be a slightly-skewed answer I gave there I think. But who cares? Sartre is but another “empty” vessel without intrinsic meaning. :p

Try the quiz, all ye existentialists - it’s quite fun actually, some of the questions are really absurd (meaning weird), heh.

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It is said that after the passing of German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche, Michel Foucault is his direct successor, both whom explored philosophy via the “genealogical method” of conceptual analysis backed by historical evolutions and categorisations.

Interestingly, Foucault had earlier called his works an “archaelogy”, and it was only much later that he started to deem them as “genealogies”. Why so? Many who read the works of Foucault are left wondering often about what exactly is the genealogical method. It is uncodified, unlike that of the scientific method and the likes of it - but it is an interesting way to “empirically study philosophy”, just as how the scientific method offers us a way to demystify the workings of Nature.

Not explicitly, Nietzsche himself actually is the pioneer of the genealogical method, not Foucault as popularly believed, who even had called himself a “Nietzschean” once. Foucault gave the Nietzchean method a name - hence the “genealogical method”. Yet it should not be of much concern to the average philosopher save for the critic of Foucault - definitions of the philosophical methods of inquiry are never as much scrutinized and fundamental as say, the historical method or the scientific method, raised by postmodernists in recent years.

Nietzsche had once called for a “study of other histories” other than that of morality, he having written on it once with On The Genealogy of Morality (1887). Foucault fulfilled this very request many years later, penning down the micro-histories of madness; sexuality; punishment and more. It is therefore advisable for us to look at the Nietzschean method of “genealogical analysis” first, and how Foucault employed it second. Also conversely true, is to understand how the genealogical method shows itself in Foucault’s works - here, the example used shall be Foucault’s Madness and Civilisation (1961).

The method was based, quite simply, on the historical behaviour and thought of Mankind - to look at a single concept, and to wonder, how would it look like to different individuals across different times in the existence of Man, to be an objective examiner studying a particular phenomena’s evolution, to “interview” people of different times via texts and records left by them about an issue. Perhaps the “genealogist of concept” was not so concerned with an evolution of meaning, but rather a change in social definition of a concept.

Herein lies a history of society - an “archaelogy” of concept. Yet Nietzsche and Foucault both saw links in between each conceptual change, a cause for redefinition from the previous, a “birth” from a parent - hence the “genealogy” of conceptual meaning. It is very much like the traditional genealogist tracing up the family tree, trying to uncover the man before this man of the same surname, of the same brand, of the same representation.

Finally, the “genealogist of concept” usually derives from his tale a hidden trend, a “side-effect” of the change of meaning. Intriguingly, rather than to have the trend be the “side-effect” of the concept, Nietzsche and Foucault, the two well-known users of this method, have virtually always made the concept sound like the “side-effect” of the trend instead - and this has very scary consequences for society if true.

We shall be looking at how Foucault is the “genealogist of concept” for the idea of “madness” in his 1961 work “Madness and Civilisation”. He begins his retelling of the story of “madness” from the Middle Ages. He argues that the definition of the “mad” by society has not been constant.

In the fifteenth century, there was no “madness” - while lepers were excluded socially and physically, the “mad” had not come to exist as a concept, as a social group (anti-social, rather) of people of their own. Those with what we would call “mad” today, were allowed to roam the streets freely, not seen as a public nuisance of any sort, and it was as far as noted - a non-issue.

Only with the decline of leprosy, were the mad’s turn come to take over the status of the lepers - to be excluded. Foucault cites the example of the “ship of fools”, supposed to bring the mad away from Europe and all the land of mortals, to isolate the mad on the seas for life.

In the seventeenth century, against the backdrop of the Enlightenment, came what Foucault termed as the “Great Confinement”, where the “unreasonable” members of the populace were locked away and institutionalized. They, Foucault taught, were the new mad. In the eighteenth century, madness had came to be seen to be an opposite of Reason.

The nineteenth century deemed “madness” as an illness of the mind. This was the final straw in the history of madness which allowed Foucault to draw his conclusion. Interestingly, Foucault views “madness” in all its notions, as something not necessarily bad, but good - as a check against social order and Reason, a license to be against society, to be anti-social. With the rise of “madness” as a mental illness, and consequently “treatments” designed to “cure” the mad, madness was losing such of its function.

Foucault argues that such “treatment” was but punishment to the mad - they cured nothing as the mad were “tortured”, only serving to prevent the mad from the “maladies” internalising the fear of punishment - there is nothing cured, only “legally prevented”.

Indeed, this “trend” I spoke of earlier on seemed to be the increase of perceived “social order” and Reason. Yet it is necessarily from the evolution of Madness that has these occurred, or is it an attempt, at doing so that the evolution occurred? Is it the means to the end? Or is it the ends to the mean? I leave you with that thought. A hint is that Foucault’s works are popularly agreed to discuss about a topic in relation to yet another concept called Power.

Foucault ended, hinting excellently, that madness viewed as a disease was not necessary - and could very well not be beneficial. Madness, to him, was a genius of Romanticism, in the so-called Age of Reason. Age of Reason, really, with the way Madness is dealt with and defined? Again that is another thought left best to you the reader to ponder.

The genealogical method is truly interesting - and is a tool that can generate new ways to look at a given topic. In Introducing Nietzsche (2005) by Laurence Gane, he says “to write such histories requires a transgression of the traditional boundaries of thought - a radical rethinking of what we mean by ‘knowledge’ in relation to ‘power’.” The genealogical method seems to be archaelogy on the research, but genealogy on the thought process.

Having said that, the genealogical method is clear to have flaws. Just like one can criticize the conventional genealogist (on family trees) for inaccurate or incomplete data, one can too criticize Foucault so. Just as the ancient world would like to erase some parts of history away against contemporary Man’s study, archaelogy “on paper” must be done to uncover these unglamorous bits of human history for inclusion in Foucault’s writings. My point is that the “genealogical method” is as open to debate and criticism as any other mode of inquiry, and yet is as valid as a philosophical mode of inquiry as compared to any other e.g. dialectical analysis.

However, if correctly practised, those who follow the genealogical method can find themselves unearthing the ugly side of Man in his attempt for his betterment, and applied towards concept, can give important clues to Man in his quest for knowledge and it is exceptionally useful for those studying sociological concepts, and put a philosophical twist to things.

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OneNote used to be a relatively-unknown Microsoft Office product back in its 2003 days. With Office 2007 came OneNote 2007, and such changed the way it was looked upon henceforth. In fact, I would daresay OneNote 2003 was a complete waste of time, while OneNote 2007 was, salvation, seriously.

What is OneNote? While officially marketed as a note-taking, minutes-taking software and the like, I would like to think of OneNote as a virtual notebook, literally. You know those (paper) notebooks in real life with a fancy cover and tabs within for you to separate content sections? Those manufactured by A-Zone and the like? OneNote files are exactly that - a notebook.

What is the advantage of OneNote over the notebook? Well firstly, it is electronic, far more successful in reducing environmental damage than the pro-green A-Zone even. That being said, it brings advantages over a non-electronic notebook. Have you ever felt the inconvenience when you write till the notebook, or perhaps a certain section of it, runs out of space? Many people, to avoid this, would cram a year’s worth of information and notes within limited space and I mean, what’s the point when you have OneNote?

OneNote allows you unlimited tabs to separate sections, and unlimited pages within sections. Before you even tell me, OneNote like real-life too visualises a two-dimensional page, and this alone I believe is OneNote 2007’s greatest improvement over its predecessor. What I mean by a two-dimensional page? It’s like real life, but I guess I should draw comparisons for better understanding.

Microsoft Notepad uses a one-dimensional page. This means you only type one-way, left to right, downwards. There is little formatting, so as to speak. Then in Microsoft Word (which very much was the preferred software for electronic note-taking back in 2003), you get a primitive two-dimensional page feature. Indeed, you could type anywhere on the page, but it was with the use of textboxes you needed to draw up, pictures with all those weird layouts, text that required troublesome wrapping and all.

In OneNote, the page is literally revolutionised. You point, click, type (or paste images), anyway, anywhere, anyhow you like. Viola! It’s exactly like real-life! You hover, ink and write (or draw) at your will, without the need to specify wrapping, layout, formatting etc. Whatever, now with the fully two-dimensional page, OneNote overtakes Word as the preferred note-taking software.

OneNote other than that boasts a highly-convenient direct audio and video recording function, where the audio content can actually be searched with Office 2007’s powerful speech recognition capabilities. An “always-on” tray icon offers the user, randomly surfing the Internet, who stumbles upon an interesting find to do a “screen clipping”, selecting information to be sent to OneNote’s “Unfiled Notes” for further use later. If you own a Tablet PC, your handwriting can easily go onto OneNote notebooks and really transform the electronic page into just about any real-life notebook, only better!

The above-mentioned are the most seducing features of OneNote. The application has got other quite-useful tricks up its sleeve, like the “file printout” feature, which are fantastic complements to its already-impressive arsenal of tools. I highly recommend OneNote to students, researchers, secretaries, just anyone who may need the information-filing capability real good and real efficiently, and I do not believe there has been another product from Microsoft I have ever felt so strongly for - OneNote 2007, it really is the best of Microsoft, ever!

The catch, however, is that OneNote comes packaged, only within the Office suites of the Home and Student, Enterprise, and Ultimate classes to my knowledge. The more common Professional version users would then need to fork out additional cash to buy OneNote standalone, unable to benefit from the savings otherwise enjoyed with OneNote in its suite form. I assure you, though, if you need it, buy it, and you will really love it. Reviews of OneNote have been mostly positive across the Internet, too.

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I remember that I started to read Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone at about the age of ten. Harry was Year One then.

Harry Potter started out looking like a children’s book. Indeed, if you ever have the time to reread everything you have so far, everything until the Half-Blood Prince, then you will realize that J.K. Rowling’s style changes as Harry changes.

More accurately, it ages with Harry. That is the strength of her writing - one cannot expect Harry to have the same kind of thinking now as he had back at Book One.

It seems obvious to say that as a child turns into a teenager, as a teenager turns into an adult, they become more settled, in control of their emotions, more mature when it comes to love.

I have grown older, Harry has grown older. We are both changed people from say… The boy we were at eleven?

J.K. Rowling specified once that she initially started out the series with no age range in mind, though publishers saw children of age nine to eleven as targets.

It is about that age where we all started to love Harry, but we have all aged too. Technically we are all childish adults, still reading a book that we ought to have overgrown.

Yet we still read Harry, and we are of the age to read more mature materials too. To let Harry age, not just physically in the book, but emotionally too, is something she should continue. It is the strength of the series - it grows with the fans. The Potter boy in the books is alive and growing well, thank you very much.

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